Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/853

 ^i. KENT: AN AMERICAN LAW STUDENT 839 Blackstone again & again. The same year I procured Humes History and his profound reflections & admirable eloquence struck most deeply on my youthful mind. I ex- tracted the most admired parts and made several volumes of M. S. S. I was admitted to the bar of the Supr. Court in January 1785, at the age of 21, and then married without one cent of property; for my education exhausted all my kind father's resources and left me in debt $400.00, which took me two or three years to discharge. Why did I marry ? I answer that. At the farmers house where I boarded, one of his daughters, a little modest, lovely girl of 14 generally caught my attention & insensibly stole upon my affections, & I be- fore I thought of love or knew what it was, I was most violently affected. I was 21. and my wife 16 when we mar- ried, Sf that charming lovely girl has been the idol 6f solace of my life, & is now with me in my office, uncon- scious that I am writing this concerning her. We have both had uniform health & the most perfect & unalloyed domestic happiness, & are both as well now & in as good spirits as when we married. We have three adult children. My son lives with me and is 26, & a lawyer, & of excellent sense, & discretion, & of the purest morals. My eldest daughter is well married, & lives the next door to me, with the intimacy of our family, my youngest daughter is now of age, she lives with me, & is my little idol. I went to housekeeping at Poughkeepsie, 1786, in a small, snug cottage, & there I lived in charming simplicity for eight years. My practice was just about sufficient to redeem me from debt, & to maintain my wife & establishment de- cently, and supply me with books about as fast as I could read them. I had neglected & almost entirely forgotten m}'^ scanty knowledge of the Greek & Roman classics, & an accident turned my attention to them very suddenly. At the June Circuit in 1786, I saw Ed. Livingstone ^ (now the codifier for Louisiana) & he had a pocket Horace & read some passages to me at some office & pointed out their beau- ' For the work of Edward I/ivinffstone in American law, see Essay No. 15, ante (Dillon: Bentham's Influence in the Reforms, etc.). — Eds.